>
>At 05:44 PM 5/16/01 +0000, Justin wrote:
> >I am apparently wasting most of my time researching the law and doing
>legal
> >analysis. I should just tell my judge she should announce, "I find for
>the
> >plaintiff because I am a liberal Democrat"; obviously law is just
>politics,
> >so we can cut out the middleman. W, what the hell do you think I do when
>I
> >draft an opinion? Is your scholarship "just politics," you don't care
>what
> >the evidence or the arguments are just so long as it agrees with your
> >political prejudices?
>
>
>Of course, you can trivialize this argument to dismiss it. But try to bear
>with me for a while to see what I am actually arguing....
>
>What I had in mind is that obviously not all judicial decisions are
>political - most cases coming before courts are apolitical in the sense
>that they do not threaten the interest of key power brokers. In such
>majority of cases, the judiciary can indeed have the luxury of thinkinng
>indepenently, doing judicial analyses, and following legal principles. But
>when to comes to making strategic decisions, all the intellectual pretenses
>count for nothing - the decision is based on whose political interests are
>to prevail. Appointind Geoerge Bush president is a case in point.
>
>Unlike most US-born members of this list, I spent my 'formative years' in
>Eastern Europe and Asia which gave me an opportunity to see the raw
>operation of the so-called 'nomenklatura system.' "Nomenklatura' is
>basically a term denoting the ruling elite collectively. The principle on
>which the system operates is very simple - the trusted members of the
>'inner circle' must occupy key decision making position, regardless of
>political circumstances. That does not mean that they control all aspects
>of social and political life - as naive US-ers often claimed. It means
>that they can throw their weight in at strategically important momenets,
>whenever the situation requires it. To use an example, most trials of
>common criminals were unbiased and fair, only the trails of the
>'dissidents' had a politically predetermined outcome.
>
>By contrast, most US-esers I met have been fed idelistic bullshit about
>'democratic principles' etc. supposedly governing this country, but they
>did not have much opportunity to experience reality contradicting this
>bullshit (Charles B. is probably one of the few exceptions). Hence, they
>tend to crirticize the system because it fails to meet their high
>idealistic standards, not because they had the first-hand experience of its
>fundamental injustice. In that respect, the positon you take reminds me of
>my father and his 'nomenklatura' colleagues who did not belive me that my
>dissident friends were persecuted by the police - they were convinced that
>we must have done something illegal, because the police did not pick up
>people at random, just for the heck of it. They could not understand that
>it would be indeed pointless for the police to arbitrarily arrest anyone,
>all they needed was the power to intervene strategically -and pick only
>those whom they saw as the threat to the status quo.
>
>One of my biggest eye-opening discoveries after "getting of the boat" was
>that the US was just like the x-USSR - the same nomenklatura system, the
>same police state practices, the same claims to ideological superiority,
>and above all, the same ideology-driven zeal to destroy teh real and
>perceived opponents of the system - the only difference was money. The US
>has mucho mucho more of it, therefore it is in a better position to buy
>social peace. And most importantly, when you talked to the "progressive"
>members of the nomenklatura, you heard the same song that you can hear from
>the assorted mebers of 'progresive' establishment here - the members of the
>opposing camp ('the old guard,' the Repugs) have to go, but the system as a
>whole is based on sound principles. Well, dream on.
>
>So when you try to convince me that the US legal system is more than just
>elite politics in disguise, you have to do more than provide some
>corroborating stories, even if such stories might me numerous, for even the
>most unfair system operate fairly most of the time. It is only at the
>strategic junctions when they are unfair because they succumb to political
>expediency. Therefore, you need to show me that at such strategic
>junctions, the US system was above political expediency - and that I am
>afraid would rather difficult to do.
>
>wojtek
>
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